A learning organization: five steps for implementation of the approach

In the new realities, businesses must be able to quickly reorient themselves to keep the course and momentum. Learning, innovative organizations can do that. And while innovations may not be for every company, flexibility and the ability to learn can be developed. Yulia Kryventseva, an organizational consultant, facilitator, and representative of Kontekst HR International Group (Poland) in Ukraine, tells us how.

There are businesses that are ready by their very nature for more flexible changes, such as IT, service and the like, and there are more conservative ones, for example, manufacture, logistics, agriculture or hotel business. Both large corporations and small businesses presently have to look for the opportunities to improve themselves every day, which means changing and learning.

American organizational consultant Peter Senge proposed an idea which he called the “fifth discipline”. He formulated five indispensable skills and practices implemented at learning organizations. His approach is a “relative” of the kaizen practice widely known and implemented in Ukraine, which is aimed to continuously improve business processes and the culture of innovation at companies of any type and size. Yulia Kryventseva’s experience suggests that the practices of learning organizations, like kaizen, could be applied not just at corporations and industrial giants. “Small and medium-sized enterprises are in even greater need for the opportunities provided by the culture of learning organizations. It’s harder for them to develop an attractive employer brand, hire workers with extensive experience and create chances for development. That’s why it becomes even more important to establish infrastructure that could preserve experience and enhance loyalty,” she explains. So, here are five steps for becoming a learning organization.

Becoming a leader and a mentor

“Our brain is designed to reject new tasks to protect us against possible mistakes and failures. Managers often encounter sabotage of goals, and every one of us knows that a new assignment causes fear. At the same time, if we go through independent search and discussion of an idea and reflex upon the question “What particular problem are you trying to overcome?”, the resulting solution will be accepted without resistance,” Yulia Kryventseva explains.

The director or business owner must discuss with their department managers in great detail the currently important changes, for example, from the new motivational schemes of the sales department to certain situations with toxic employees. The sharing of experience, demonstration of style and management, and communications which the director now expects from his managers simultaneously take place in these discussions.

Showing team goals and prospects

“Learning organizations see a broad picture and a far-reaching perspective. They have the feeling of their role, and understand why they exist in the market,” Yulia Kryventseva says. “If order for your team to become learning, the first thing you have to do is to make sure that it’s exactly the team you need. Creative, confident, freely thinking, not abiding by the generally accepted rules but a dynamic one,” Anna Pryshutova, Psytron CEO and a business consultant, believes. “Secondly, you must positively answer the question whether you are ready for clear and transparent working procedures inside your organization, goals, strategy and motivation system, and whether you are ready to meet democratic values of organizations of this type. And thirdly, you must ensure that every member of your team has full access to the entire information, establish information exchange and feedback.”

Yulia Kryventseva recommends to organize, at the beginning of a project for a new or a key customer, at the end of a period or in the beginning of a calendar or a fiscal year, a working meeting of your team to share your vision of the context in which your company operates. That’s how you do it:

1) Formulate trends, based on facts and visible trends.

2) Share your vision of the future you want to create for your company, and what situation in the future would deserve your efforts.

3) Based on your experience, define the difficulties logically following from it when working on achieving your goals.

4) Formulate and write down, together with the team, real applied steps that would allow you (even if these assumptions would necessitate corrections in the course of implementation) to find yourself in the desired position and realize that your goals have been achieved.

It is important that this team meeting is attended by key employees who have the greatest motivation to invest their time and efforts in the company’s development.

Activate feedback and experience exchange

Obligatory feedback and experience exchange is the opportunity to discuss what’s going on at the organization at all its levels, to systemize observations and draw conclusions. Gradually introduce individual communication sessions between department managers and their teams in order to know their expectations and coordinate actions. “It is important to make sure that managers are prepared for this communication and that they gather examples of efficient and inefficient behavior of their employees,” the expert stressed. “Usually, this conversation takes place at the end of a planned period or at the end of a project. The words “My doors are always open – you can come in at any time and talk about what worries you” should not be a formality.

“If the director and employees are used to live in a hierarchical structure, it is important for them to ensure full access of every team member to the entire information and to maintain feedback. At this stage, they could be helped by a personnel training system, certification of team members (with the announcement of results, of course), implementation of various methods of optimizing the functional inside the team. And another indispensable element: creating a motivation system that could stimulate learning, exchange of ideas and skills, and the desire of employees to uphold the company’s values and goals,” Anna Pryshutova added.

Discussing problems

Open discussions help analyze the problem on all sides, enabling every department to contribute a puzzle of their own experience to the general picture. When creating a learning organization, you can encounter fear and criticism on part of your employees and confusion among department managers, who have no experience in making independent decisions. Yulia Kryventseva suggests to start with working in project groups on tasks that are not innovational but new to your company. For example, write down the processes for service and customer support specialists, and start abiding by them. These project groups must contain key members with the immediate interest in changes in project areas. They come the way from planning to implementation.

Appreciating mistakes

What makes a mistake useful is its realization and correction. “It makes no sense to run a long distance with an injured leg. Therefore, common sense suggests not to deny your deficiencies or failures but to regard them as a source of experience – discuss them, reflex upon them, change an imperfect process, turn an apt solution into a working template,” the expert recommends.

At your organization, everyone must know that mistakes must not accumulate. Open teams hold frequent meetings (usually every two-three weeks), where project managers and key team members speak together about their difficulties. Simultaneously, project participants themselves find the ways to fix them, and the top manager shares his experience and offers available resources to solve the problems.

Each of the aforementioned five recommendations is aimed to ensure that experience gained by a business is conceptualized and quickly implemented, without wasting time and without obsoleting. “As you implement all that in practice, you will find new difficulties in the matters that seemed obvious and will increase your competency in discussing problems that seem complex. Do not rush. Learning new things takes time, but its fruits have lasting taste,” Yulia Kryventseva sums up.